


Sportswomanship and Camaraderie

by greenbucket



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Awkward Flirting, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 05:32:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17698586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbucket/pseuds/greenbucket
Summary: April loses a teasing edge to her expression that Camilla hadn't realised was there until April bristles. “I was making a joke? What you said sounded like you were saying you were April, but I’m April.”The silence stretches horrifically. “Oh,” says Camilla. “Ha ha.”





	Sportswomanship and Camaraderie

**Author's Note:**

> For femslash Feb and the omgcp rarepair bingo square 'flirting'

Camilla is very, very, very drunk. Which is fine! Because she’s at a party, meaning somewhere where it is socially acceptable and cool to get very, very, very drunk. Also, she’s drunk for good reasons – handing in a paper that’s dragged forever, and finally getting back on the court after her hamstring fucked her over – so she’s not going to like, start crying about everyone that’s wronged her. Everyone that wronged her is her own damn hamstring, plus making the mistake of taking a class with a professor that ‘disagreed’ with lecture slides, and that’s all behind her now.

And really, she’s not actually _that_ drunk? When Camilla says this, the tennis squad she’s with all give each other a look, but she isn’t. She’s in the giggly, dizzy stage of being very, very, very drunk not the oh-God-I-regret-everything stage and it’s where she’s planning to stay; she’s switched out to water and everything.

The space that’s been cleared in whoever’s living room to act as a dance floor is very, very, very warm, however. Water or no water, Camilla can feel the dehydration setting in as soon as she pauses dancing and takes stock of reality. Woozy, woozy reality.

“I think,” she tells the tennis squad, with great decorum, “I might get some fresh air.”

Where exactly to get fresh air isn’t clear, so she takes a couple of minutes squeezing hopefully through crowds with her cup of water held above her head and trying locked doors. When there is finally one that opens it leads out to a scrubby, minimally maintained back yard, made up of roughly cut grass and a plastic table and chairs set with one person sitting at it, wrapped up against the cold.

A little way away Camilla can see the intermittent glow and hear the chatter of people smoking. The smell takes her back to freshman year when she’d been younger and laxer about drug tests, but now she’s older and appropriately serious or whatever, so she just takes a seat in one of the chairs. She’s not so drunk that she doesn’t realise in about two minutes she’s going to be freezing even if she unties her own jacket from her waist, but for the time being the night air still feels pleasantly cool against Camilla’s skin after the sweaty house.

With some steady, refreshing breathing and careful, refreshing water sipping, she eases back into comfortably dizzy drunk – and remembers there’s another person at the table. “Wow, hey, sorry to have like, completely ignored you! I swear, I’m not _that_ drunk that I don’t have _manners_. I’m – oh! April, hey.”

April, all wrapped up, squints at her. “You’re not April. I’m April.”

Camilla squints back. “I know _you’re_ April. You’re one of the volleyball captains. And I’m Camilla. Uh. I play tennis?”

April nods. “I know.”

Okay, maybe Camilla is drunker than she thought, because she feels entirely lost. “Good to know we’re on a level footing here understanding-wise, then.”

April loses a teasing edge to her expression that Camilla hadn't realised was there until April bristles. “I was making a joke? What you said sounded like you were saying you were April, but I’m April.”

The silence stretches horrifically. “Oh,” says Camilla. “Ha ha.”

April looks painfully embarrassed for a moment, then rolls her eyes as if to cover it up and turns slightly so she’s facing away from Camilla. The signal is clear: end of conversation.

Camilla takes a massive gulp of her water and tries not to wonder too desperately where all her charisma has vanished off to. She’s _good_ at talking to people, even people who most people find tricky, and Camilla doesn’t even find April tricky. There’s a prickling awkward second where she wonders if maybe she’s like, actually spoken to April before – not just seen her playing and at Samwell Athletics events from afar and in promo videos – and just forgotten. Are they on joking terms? But Camilla would’ve remembered; she’s pretty sure she wouldn’t forget actually plucking up the nerve to tell someone how much she admires them.

As like, a fellow athlete, obviously.

Clearly the sentiment isn’t returned, so it’s probably a good thing Camilla hasn’t ever said anything. April would’ve probably been weirded out by some random blurting, ‘Hey, I’m just a fan of volleyball so like, not an expert, but I’ve loved your playing style since forever and I’m so impressed with your captaining style. It’s amazing how great the team is doing under your leadership! And March’s. Uh.’

Except it would’ve been much smoother in reality, because Camilla is good at talking to people, dammit.

As it is, she’s drunk, so the second she’s got half her focus on untying her jacket from her waist, to make sure she doesn’t freeze, the rest of her brain is taking the chance to ignore the silence and blurt, “Hey, I’m just a fan of volleyball so like, not an expert, but I’ve loved–”

“Oh God, sorry,” someone interrupts from beside her, and then there’s a retching noise, and then someone has thrown up on her jacket and somehow not at all on her but still on her chair and is being led away by their friend who is still apologising and–

Camilla’s fine. She’s not grossed out. She’s not a sympathy-puker. She is fine.

April, meanwhile, seems to be trying to stifle her laughter by stuffing her entire hand in her mouth. Camilla looks down at her vomit-covered jacket and whatever her face is saying only makes April snort and start to laugh harder.

Camilla stands up, holding her jacket out stiffly away from her body as she walks over and lays her jacket down on the grass. Because she is really, really too drunk to deal with it now. Hopefully whoever finds it will feel bad and wash it then put up a lost property Facebook post or something, so Camilla doesn’t have to deal with her vomit jacket ever.

Camilla also avoids the vomit chair when she returns, picking a clean chair on April’s other side. While April is wiping her eyes, Camilla decides to get through this she’s just going to take a minute and sip her water and then tomorrow, when she’s hungover, she’ll process what just happened. God. Her poor jacket.

“Sorry,” says April after a moment or two, entirely insincere. “I guess I shouldn’t have laughed? But that was so gross.”

“I hadn’t realised.”

April starts to smile, then winds it back in. “But kind of funny?” she ventures.

It kind of was, or at least it will be once hungover Camilla of tomorrow has processed the grossness. She wants to see April’s smile in full, anyway, so she says as teasing as she dares considering the awkwardness earlier, “Yeah, kind of funny. For you.”

April smiles for real and Camilla is like, not having feelings about that. None at all. “I know you found that funny, deep down.” April says, confident. “That’s going to be your party story for the next year at least.”

“Uh, okay, I don’t know what kind of party stories you’re telling,” says Camilla, and then tries not to wince wondering if that was too familiar. They’re not like, _friends_.  

April shrugs. “Guess you’ll have to wait and find out.”

Camilla blinks, more than happy to pick up what April’s putting down if that’s what April _is_ putting down. Like, beyond happy. But April doesn’t seem to read that, because she gets the painful embarrassed expression again and says, “Um, here, I feel bad. Take my jacket, you’re going blue.”

“What about you?” Camilla asks, a token protest because she’s already taking April’s jacket from her and slipping her arms in. It’s warm from April’s body even in the cold and smells like perfume and that’s just fine. Camilla’s fine.

“I’m good,” April says, even as she’s shivering a little and wrapping her arms around herself. “We don’t have to stay out here forever. I just wanted to be able to hear properly, though, about how you’re a volleyball fan but not like, an expert?”

Camilla groans and smiles at April’s smile in spite of herself. She tries to tamp down her drunken default of being as embarrassingly enthusiastic as possible so she can pick what opinions to share about how the team’s season has been going. As it is, she’s drunk, so.

“Not an expert?” April asks when Camilla’s done with her spiel. Her tone is ribbing – a pretty transparent coverup of how pleased she’d looked at Camilla’s words – and she’s got one eyebrow raised, leaving Camilla fighting the weird impulse to like, press her fingertips against it. It’s a _raised eyebrow_ , but as she looks it strikes her suddenly as very April, and it sets something off balance in her chest.

It’s whatever. She likes to imagine it’s athletic appreciation, but in reality Camilla’s been nursing this fanciful, from-a-distance crush for long enough to accept each development as it comes. She shrugs inside April’s jacket instead of saying anything about the charming April-ness of April’s eyebrow. Could she pass that off as one girl platonically complimenting another’s eyebrows? Probably better not to risk it, Camilla figures, not with the amount of soda and vodka she’s got zipping around her brain.

“I might’ve been to a couple of games,” she admits. There. Sportswomanship and camaraderie.

April’s half-unwound smile appears again. “I know,” she says, “I’ve seen you at a couple.”

The emphasis she puts on ‘a couple’ lets Camilla knows she’s been busted and has been for a while.

“Oh,” Camilla says and doesn’t know what to say after, the whole conversation reconfiguring itself in her mind as she tries to parse out if the strong, strong sense that April really is putting something down for Camilla to pick up is just wishful thinking. It doesn’t feel like wishful thinking, the possibility that April has been trying to flirt, less so and less so. The way April is looking at her is definitely real. She gave Camilla her jacket.

Camilla would feel more embarrassed about how she's apparently been less than subtle for some time, or about how this is all happening now, in a freezing garden at some party when she’s drunk enough that she's stumbled all over April's attempts at starting something, drunk enough that they probably shouldn’t do anything anyway. But she looks at April’s smile in the light from the house and breathes in the smell of April's perfume from her jacket and she can’t quite bring herself to.


End file.
